There was a blaze of light in the Smithsonian. There were voices and footsteps. Gib moved to meet them. He was not afraid at all. Not of being in trouble. Not of being lost in the Smithsonian. Not of anything. He was glad.
There were three guards. One of them was an old man with a straggly mustache wearing a uniform cap pushed back over his forehead. Gib thought he looked like U. S. Sam ought to look. There were two policemen, young men with cheery faces. And there were Miss Jasper and Mr. Johnson.

Miss Jasper wasn't crying, but she looked as though she might have been. She walked right up to Gib and put her arms around him. He felt a little uncomfortable. Miss Jasper wasn't his mother, and besides who wants to be hugged in front of policemen?

"We didn't really miss you until dinner time," she explained. "I thought you were with Mr. Johnson and the boys. Mr. Johnson thought you were with me. Then getting the class all tucked in and getting the police to help and backtracking every place we'd been all day. The Washington Monument, the Library of Congress, the Lincoln Memorial…Oh, Gilbert Wharton how did you ever manage to get locked in here until four o'clock in the morning?"

Mr. Johnson said nothing at all.

But one of the cheery policemen said, "We find a hundred of 'em every day. Usually right were somebody left 'em. Especially if they're smart enough to stay put like this one. You're a Boy Scout, I bet," he said to Gib.

Mr. Johnson spoke sensibly and softly.

"A sandwich and bed for you boy."

The group walked past the rotunda, and Miss Jasper held Gib's hand.

"Whatever did you do all the lonely time in here?" she asked.

Gib seemed to hear a faint, if happy, barking, and then a tiny, tiny whine saying a sad good-bye.

"I asked you what you did, Gilbert," said Miss Jasper.

"I slept some," answered Gib.

That's all he ever did say until he got back to Lindenwold, New Jersey, and told his mother the whole story. She looked at him a long time with much love and just the hint of a question in her eyes, but all she said was, "He must have been a wonderful dog to take such good care of you."

She didn't say anything at all, and maybe she couldn't after the man from the Post office in Philadelphia came to Lindenwold and asked for Gib.

The man had a postcard with him addressed to Gilbert Wharton. The card had no writing on it; just a dog's paw print.

"Notice anything about it?" asked the man very quietly.

"No, sir," said Gib.

"Well, it's postmarked Tacoma, Washington, and the stamp is a four-cent Lincoln issue in velvet-brown of the year 1894. That's a seventy-year-old stamp, son, and maybe the card is too. I'm writing to the Postmaster General in Washington about it."

"Yes, sir," said Gib, looking at his mother and the man steadily.

It was nice to know that Owney had had a safe trip back to Tacoma in the state of Washington.